


Caught in the Rip Tide.

by cheerynoir



Series: Drowning!verse [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asha doesn't know what's up but she worries, Cycle of Abuse, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Violence, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, POV Second Person, Ramsay is his own warning, Someone please help Theon Greyjoy (not you Ramsay), Theon's in denial, Things Get Worse, foster kid Theon, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 18:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3660180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheerynoir/pseuds/cheerynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a long, hard summer; days and weeks blurring into sweat-slick nights. Theon loses touch with some friends quite suddenly - but a quiet night in is just what the doctor ordered.</p><p>(Or: domestic bliss, Thramsay-style)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught in the Rip Tide.

_July_

Kyra goes missing. You find out on the radio, in the middle of your shift. It’s a Wednesday night, slow enough that when you drop the glass you’re holding, it doesn’t cause much of a stir. You swear loud enough that it makes you flinch, and barely keep from shredding your hands on broken glass when you drop down to clean it up.

Cleftjaw spends the rest of the night checking your drink-orders to make sure you don’t fuck them up, you look that out of it. You try to smile, but it feels hollower than usual. 

You haven’t talked to Kyra since the winter, the bleak tail-end of February, when she called you to tell you that she was seeing someone, really seeing someone, a nice guy from Trident University, and please, please don’t be mad, we can still be friends – just the kind that don’t fuck when they feel like they’re dying inside. Please be happy for me, Theon, please?

But she’s missing. Her father reported it when she didn’t come home for the weekend like she usually did, the report says.

(You didn’t know. That seems – important. That you were unaware, that you didn’t know. It echoes in your head and thickens in your throat, clots up your lungs like smoke. You didn’t know. You didn’t know. _You didn’t-_ )

You finish your shift in a haze and go home. Asha’s gone, will be gone for a few more weeks, but Ramsay’s there. You’re surprised. He’s been away, more often than not.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, crowding you against the front door. 

You just slump a little more, so fucking tired, beaten down. “Nothing,” you tell him. You kiss him, desperate and vicious, and taste grief thick in your mouth, kept safe behind your teeth. “Make me forget my own name.”

He does. 

It doesn’t help.

Kyra’s still gone – like smoke. Poof.

You try to forget.

 

_August._

 

Asha comes home when Ramsay out where-ever he goes. He’s been doing that a lot recently – leaving for hours and coming back with silence slung about him like a cloak, but usually in a better mood than when he left. You don’t mind it so much, really. A better mood means an easier life. But Asha takes one look at you and stops short, a basket of clean laundry on her hip.

“What the fuck happened to your face?” she asks.

You smile and feel your lower lip twinge as the scabbing pulls taut. “Nothing,” you say with a bit of a shrug. But she didn’t let it go, dark eyes flicking from your face to your neck, where the bruising is still dark.

“Theon,” she says, warning, and you wave her off.

“I bashed my face on the headboard. Slipped,” you tell her. It’s not even a lie. You look away and rub the back of your neck, huffing a self-deprecating laugh even as your neck flares with pain. “What – you’ve never had shit like that happen in bed?”

She grimaces at the information, but her eyes are flat and wary. “Not with the frequency you seem to. You look like you got mauled, the last time we Skyped.”

“I’ve always been accident-prone,” you say. “You remember.”

“…Yeah,” she says at last. She gives her head a bit of a shake and moves off down the hall, glancing back. “I’m going to be around for a week or so, until I ship out again.”

The Greyjoys have had their names on one the most profitable shipping companies on the coast since before you were born. Since before your father was born. Asha oversees things, hands-on like, in your uncle’s stead while Euron busies himself actually running the company – but mostly, you figure, she likes the feeling of a ship under her feet and the command of it all.

“Whatever. Don’t bitch when I have someone over.”

“Knowing you, they’ll be gone within the hour,” she replies without missing a beat, and despite yourself, you laugh. You haven’t told her about Ramsay.

You’ve missed her – the realization almost surprises you. Usually, you like your family best when they’re three hours away and not criticizing your life-choices.

For all her talk, though, Asha’s gone out – Qarl and beer make better company, apparently – by the time Ramsay wanders in. You’ve never given him a key, but he just keeps on appearing in your living room like he belongs there. And since he’s been doing that for six months, more or less, you’ve had enough time to get used to it. You told him to knock once, and he did it with so much obnoxious glee that your neighbours complained and you’d honestly preferred his dabbling in B&E – what even is your life, seriously?

But this morning is still fresh in your mind, so you deliberately do not look at him. You try to see a pattern in the stains and shadows stretching across the ceiling instead. You don’t look, even when you hear the rustling of a plastic bag, or the curiously heavy sound of something being set on the coffee table. You do, however, tongue at the scab on your lip, worrying at it until the pain and the tinge of blood you can taste makes you stop.

It looks worse than it is, you know that; the skin is swollen and split like an over-ripe fruit. It took forever to stop bleeding. But you didn’t lie to Asha – he didn’t hit you. You hit your face off the headboard, because of course you did. What Ramsay was doing at the time is irrelevant. 

You shift a little, stretching out more fully on the sofa. You’ve been draped there for most of the afternoon, since you called in sick to work. Cleftjaw was starting to wonder, and you didn’t want to have to explain anything to him, even if his concern was well-meant and misplaced.

“Still mad, huh?” he asks. To his credit, he doesn’t sound nearly as smug as he had that morning.

(Though, really, you might have misheard. You’d only been sleeping for an hour when he’d woke you with an insistent kiss and demanding hands and you’d dozed while he’d done as he wanted, too tired from a double-shift to protest all that much. You might have misheard, that’s all. It’s completely reasonable, as far as assumptions go – you were dozing one moment, and the next there was a flare of white-hot pain and you were choking on the flood of blood that washed down your chin an across your tongue, hotter than a kiss.)

You ignore him. It’s more difficult than it has any right to be.

“And after I went through all the trouble of getting you a present, too.”

There’s some part of you – the attention-starved foster kid begging for a crumb of affection, maybe – that perks at that, that wants to look with a hunger that borders on indecent. That wants to forgive and forget and tear into whatever-it-is with the desperation of someone looking for a life-line or a reassurance— _you like me? You really like me?_

You smother the urge, save for the darting of your eyes. Ramsay is a shadow at the corner of your vision. What catches your attention is the bottle of liquor on the coffee table. Pebbled glass and vividly green because of its contents, the bottle is hard to miss.

“Midori?” you ask, startled. As much as you like your coffee black and bitter as rocket fuel, you’ve liked your booze sweet. You’ve never told him that you like this melon liqueur best, but then again, Ramsay’s perspective. Always has been.

Ramsay shrugs a little, looking pleased, at least, that he managed to break down your silent treatment. Ramsay’s no good at being ignored – neither are you. “I thought you might like it.”

“You’re still an asshole,” you tell him. A warning, maybe. A prefix. My behavior doesn’t matter, don’t believe it, I still think you’re a tool.

But he only smirks and shrugs one shoulder, running a hand though his hair like he knows you’re already half-way to forgiving him. “Yeah,” he says. “But you keep me around.”

“Lucky you,” you deadpan. When he motions you to get up, you do, but only enough that he can sit. Then you flop back and your head rests on his thigh. One of his hands slides easy-sweet into your hair, but his attention goes to the television you’ve more-or-less been ignoring for hours.

“Lucky me,” he hums in agreement, channel-flipping. He settles on the evening news and you make a face at him; there are better things to watch. Less depressing things, at least. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything, but you catch him smiling a little out of the corner of your eye.

You’ve barely settled when you feel his fingers on your face, cupping your jaw. His thumb sweeps along the swell of your lower lip, catching a little on the split. You jerk your face out of his grip and turn onto your side, glowering at the television screen.

“Don’t do that,” you mutter. He sighs and skritches his fingers over your scalp. You try to force yourself to stay tense, but your shoulders loosen despite your best efforts.

“I _am_ sorry, you know,” he says. “It was an accident.”

“Yeah,” you grunt, noncommittal. There’s an odd smell that cling to Ramsay. It takes you a moment to place it: wood smoke, rather than cigarette. You breathe gingerly. Pine. Smoke. Earthy things – turned soil, rotting leaves. Something warm and musky. You shift and pick a short black hair from the knee of his jeans. Dog.

“Where were you today?” you ask. You flick the hair away and wipe your hand on your shirt.

“I took the girls out for a run.” His fingers slid through your hair slowly, languid. “Out by my father’s cabin, up north. Made a day of it.”

“The one in the middle of the woods?” He’d told you about it sparingly. Said that he’d like to take you up there, when the weather was good enough. You’re not looking forward to it, exactly, but it might be nice. A change of scenery.

(You stepped out to buy cigarettes yesterday and could have sworn you say Kyra ducking into the shop just ahead of you. You couldn’t breathe for a moment. Scrambling after her, you reached out and grabbed her – but it was only a young mother, looking terrified and reaching for something in her purse. You let her go as if scalded and slunk off, muttering apologies before she could mace you.)

“Mhm,” Ramsay hums. “Why do you ask?”

“Curious,” you mutter. He lets it be, and silence settles easily. On the television, there is a woman with blonde hair and a desperate, hollow-eyed smile talking about troubles in the local schools. Her smile reminds you of your own, though you’re of the opinion that yours is, at least, more convincing.

He hums in reply. The news anchor’s partner changes the subject and-

“-In other news, Wintertown Avenue’s Jeyne Poole has been reported missing. Last seen on foot, making her way home from Northern University three days ago.” A picture of the girl in question flashes across the screen – brown hair, big brown eyes, smiling prettily for the camera – and you’re hit with a sick sense of unease. You knew her. A friend of a friend, really, but you knew her all the same. You wonder how Sansa is taking the news. “Last seen wearing a purple sweater and dark jeans. When questioned, local police were quoted as saying that ‘it is too soon to tell if this is in any way related to the eight other women reported missing since March.’ Anyone with any information on the disappearances, please call—”

You stop listening. There’s a dull buzzing in your ears. You mouth is dry, cottony.

“I know her,” you say, hoarse and quiet. Shocked. “She’s a friend of Sansa’s. I know her.”

Ramsay makes a questioning sound in the back of his throat, but you’re half-sitting up, digging for the phone in your jeans. You should call, shouldn’t you? I mean – you’re not family, you reason, but she’s Robb’s little sister’s best friend – that means something, doesn’t it? You-

You catch yourself half-way through a text to Robb, asking for Sansa’s number, or information, or even how is she?

You’re not speaking to Robb right now. Because you’re an idiot who fucked everything up. You’re a fucking coward, is the long and the short of it – you want to reach out, for Sansa’s sake, but that means talking to Robb, and you haven’t spoken to Robb since the disaster in June. You don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to hear his ‘Sorry, but I just don’t…’

(As much as you want to pretend it didn’t happen, you close your eyes and feel his lips under yours, just for a second. The distress in his gaze and the thin, unimpressed line of his mouth lingers longer in your mind’s eye. It hurts as much as it did in the flesh.)

It hits you like swallowing lead – heavy, cold. You feel sick. You drop your phone onto the coffee table, message unsent, and slump back. Ramsay’s hand settles back against your scalp. It’s more comforting than you could ever admit, his thigh under your cheek and his hand in your hair, petting slowly.

“It’s awful,” Ramsay says, as the news bleeds into local weather. “All these Northern girls disappearing. This town really is going to the dogs.”

You mutter something in reply. You don’t know what. His free hand falls to your shoulder, and he traces the X carved into your bicep, so softly you wonder if he knows he’s doing it. You shiver.

“First Kyra, now Jeyne,” You say, but the words trail off into nothingness. If you had a point to make, it’s gone now. Ramsay lets the silence lay. He’s very warm, and you don’t know why that surprises you after so long. It’s almost uncomfortable, since the evening is still hot and your building doesn’t have AC, but you wouldn’t dream of moving.

Time passes slowly. You feel like you’re floating a little bit, dozing, but also standing behind the couch, looking on. It’s an odd dream, if a dream at all. You’ve been having it a lot recently.

You come back to yourself when Ramsay shifts. He leans down and brushes a kiss to the corner of your mouth, mindful, at least, of your split and swollen lip. It’s a sweet twinge of almost-pain and you sigh a little. His lips quirk, eyes narrowed very slightly. It’s either pleasure or calculation, and you don’t really care which at this point.

“Come on,” he says, quiet like you’re speaking in church. “You’re a wreck, sweetling. To bed.”

It’s easy to follow him. He rarely gives you any other choice.

You’re sitting on the edge of the bed, wondering how long it will take for your restlessness to take hold, when he passes you a glass of water with a pointed expression. You stare back blankly.

“Your medicine,” he prompts, and you realize you’re holding the bottle. It’s not labelled. You don’t know what the pills are, just that they knock you out and Ramsay brought them home one morning a month or two ago. You give the bottle a shake, just to hear the rattle of it.

(“You haven’t been sleeping. These will help,” he said.

“Stop being stubborn, pet – you need to sleep,” he said.

“Take the pills,” he said.

“Refuse them again, and you’ll wish you hadn’t,” he said, soft.

You took the pills.)

You rattle the bottle again, but don’t twist the cap right away. Your mouth is as dry and cracked. You think of Kyra’s long dark hair, her clever fingers, her full-body laugh. You think of Jeyne, who was never a beauty, but pretty in a sweet sort of way, quick to giggle, quicker to blush. It had almost been cute, once upon a time.

You take a sip of water and cheek the pill you press onto your tongue.

“What do we say, pet?” Ramsay asks as you curl up and shut your eyes. 

“Thank you,” you mutter. He hums and cups your nape, then, thumb tracing the bite-mark on your neck, and you know he’s pleased with you.

Minutes flicker past, and you will yourself to slacken, to mimic the sleep that avoids you most nights. Your body goes heavy, disconnected, and the light makes everything seem bloody behind your closed eyelids.

You don’t open your eyes when you hear him leave the room. You don’t quicken your breathing when you hear his boots in the hall. You don’t even twitch when you listen as the front door opens and shuts, the lock clicking into place. 

You crack one eye eventually. You pad to the bathroom and rinse the gritty remains from your mouth, watching the white powder as it swirls down the drain. There’s a stale, medicinal taste in your mouth that not even toothpaste can cover, and sweat drips down your back from the evening heat.

_Where are you going?_

But the apartment is quiet, and you know better than to ask when he is around to hear it.

“Usually I’m the one walking away,” you say to the silence.

You’re not sure you like the turn-around at all. You hate that lost-kid feeling that surfaces, that irrational fear that they – whoever they are; Mother-Asha-Kyra-Ros-Robb-Robb- _Robb_ – are never coming back, that you’re going to be alone forever, until you’re rotting in the ground or given back to the sea for the fish to devour.

But he’s back come morning all easy smiles and careful hands. Asha snores lumber-jack loud down the hall and his breath washes hot and damp against your neck when he crawls into your bed. He smells of cigarette smoke and sweat, cheap perfume and something musky.

He doesn’t ask if you slept, and you don’t ask where he’s been.

The sun rises slowly, crawling like a beaten dog across your floor from a gap in the blinds.

You’re not alone. You’re not.

For now, that’s good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I told you a plot was coming eventually.
> 
> Many thanks to me beta,[Theonaf](http://www.theonaf.tumblr.com/) \- or here, [undertheweirdwood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Undertheweirwood/pseuds/Undertheweirwood/) \- who helped with the little things.
> 
> Let me know what you think - and come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.cheerynoir.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
